All the while, Mrs. Fletcher kept up an inarticulate moaning, though the sound grew fainter from exhaustion.

“Let us stop this,” said Bullion, seeing the gathering crowd of passers-by.  “Better be at home.”

Pointing to the still prostrate woman, he, with Mr. Danforth, gently raised her up and placed her in the carriage.  She did not speak, but murmured pleadingly, while her face wore a look of agonized longing, and her outstretched hands clutched nervously.

“Poor thing!” said Mr. Danforth, his voice beginning to tremble,—­“she shall have her dead husband, if it is any comfort to her.”

“That’s right,” said Bullion,—­“carry him off before half-a-dozen coroner-buzzards come to fight over him.”

The body was laid in the carriage, the head she had so often caressed resting in her lap, while her tears bathed the unconscious face, and her groans became heart-rending.  Still holding the carriage-door, Mr. Danforth turned to Sandford, saying,—­

“I don’t know what you have done, but his blood is on your soul.  I would rather be like him there, than you, on your feet.—­Bullion, I don’t mind the ten thousand dollars; but was it just the manly thing to leave a man that trusted you in this way to be sacrificed?  Why didn’t you come down this morning?  God forgive you!—­Coachman, drive to Carleton Street.”

He stepped into the carriage, and away it rolled with its load of sorrow.

Mr. Sandford found the glances of his companion and the bystanders quite uncomfortable, and he slunk silently away.  Failure and disgrace he had met; but this was a position for which he had not the nerve.  The self-accusing Cain was not the only man who has exclaimed, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.”  Flight was the only alternative for Sandford.  As long as he remained in Boston, every face seemed to wear a look of condemnation.  The mark was set upon him, and avenging fiends pursued him.  That very day he left the city in disguise.  Through what trials he passed will never be known.  But destitute, friendless, and broken-spirited, he wandered from city to city, a vagabond upon the face of the earth.  Nor did a sterner retribution long delay.  In New Orleans, he was so far reduced that he was obliged to earn a miserable support in an oyster-saloon near the levee.  One night, a fight began between some drunken boatmen:  and Sandford, though in no way concerned in the affair, received a chance bullet in his forehead, and fell dead without a word.

CHAPTER XXIX.